The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing: A History

In the 19th century, French doctors wrote more about menopause than doctors in other cultures, and this led to the idea of menopause being invented by French male medical students. This was an important topic in postrevolutionary biomedicine, and older women were seen as a key patient group for medicalization. The concept of menopause drew on earlier ideas about women as the sicker sex, vitalist crisis, vapors, and astrological climacteric years. This study is the first to explore the origins of the medical concept of menopause in France, showing how it was shaped by women's aging, folk medicine, hygiene, and psychiatry. It reveals that menopause was seen as something to be managed through gynaecological surgery, hormonal replacement, and lifestyle intervention.

Format: Hardback
Length: 512 pages
Publication date: 20 October 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Throughout the entirety of the nineteenth century, the number of doctors in France who wrote about menopause vastly exceeded those in other cultures. The concept of menopause was conceived by French male medical students in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which subsequently became a significant pedagogical topic and a prevalent theme of doctors' professional identities in postrevolutionary biomedicine. In the context of the expanding medicalization of French society, older women were recognized as a crucial patient cohort, and they were advised to place their trust in the hygienic care of doctors to navigate the entirety of their life, spanning from around and after the final cessation of menses. Nevertheless, menopause drew upon earlier notions of women as the weaker sex, experiencing vitalist crises, being afflicted by vapors, and marking the passage into astrological climacteric years. This groundbreaking study constitutes the first comprehensive exploration of the origins of the medical concept of menopause, providing a rich contextualization of its significance within nineteenth-century French medicine. It unveils the intricate threads of meaning that shaped its invention, revealing how women's aging played a pivotal role in the demographic revolution in modern science, the denigration of folk medicine, the unique French field of hygiène, and the heightened focus on women in the emergence of modern psychiatry. Through its revelations, the study sheds light on the nineteenth-century French origins of the prevailing medical and alternative-health approaches to women's aging, which are currently managed through gynaecological surgery, hormonal replacement, and lifestyle interventions.

Weight: 998g
Dimension: 240 x 164 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192842916